Adding chocolate to proteins like chicken, pork, or seafood can elevate your idea of a savory mole. Of course, you can make other chocolate dishes with protein, but if you've never cooked with chocolate, it's different from what you expect, like in the movie Chocolat. This ingredient needs help balancing the dish's flavors since dark chocolate—with its small percentage of dairy—can leave your dish intensely acidic, almost bitter!
So, when do you add chocolate to your recipe?
When making a sauce, just like baking, add it close to the end of your recipe. The chocolate will not have any sugar. By adding it to the recipe with a bit of sugar, these two ingredients will help carry through, while warming spices and currants will help balance a savory sauce. Chilies, warming spices, vinegar, and dried fruits help carry a sauce if you gently nurse it until it's well-balanced.
What is white chocolate?
White chocolate is not a bean; its ingredients are vanilla, butter fats, and solids. It can be flavored with other fruits and used mainly for baking. I don't recommend baking a white chocolate cake since it will probably taste like vanilla. It's a challenging flavor to bring out in a dish except in cookies, brownies, and bars.
What about milk chocolate?
Milk chocolate is best for baking since savory dishes taste too sweet and milky, with the dairy in milk chocolate. Most milk chocolate is made with milk powder, whereas Hershey's chocolate uses natural milk. The sour finish at the end is from the natural milk. Try taking a Hershey's bar, smelling it, and then eating a piece immediately. You will notice the sour finish.
I've heard about ruby chocolate.
Ruby chocolate is new on the market and hails from South America and the Ivory Coast. It tastes like berries despite having no dyes or sugars. Its bean is pink and is only for sweet desserts instead of savory dishes.
Do you prefer dark chocolate?
Dark chocolate is for baking and cooking. It can burn very quickly in high temperatures and become intolerable to eat. I don't recommend boiling chocolate since roasted chocolate is awful.
Press & Mortar has a great variety of chocolate, cocoa, feves, and crunchies. Come check it out!